As the general population is living longer, medical costs associated with the aging population are increasing. The costs associated with diseases, such as cancer, are typically enormous. For example, cancer costs are projected to be the highest growth area in healthcare spending without a commensurate improvement in outcomes. Approximately $125 billion was spent in 2010 on cancer care in the United States alone, and estimates are that approximately 15-30% of the spending can be categorized as “waste”. Conventional techniques to control costs, such as clinical pathways and disease management, are typically ineffective, but there are no quality alternatives that currently exist in the market today.
As advancements in technology and medicine continue to occur, the science and clinical practice of caring for diseases (such as cancer) are rapidly evolving. Often, medical professionals (e.g., oncologists) have a difficult time keeping up with these advancements. These advancements, such as next generation genetic sequencing, are typically complex and may present major issues for health plans and medical professionals. As a result, health plans will likely need more tools and support to manage their medical (e.g., oncology) business. Similarly, medical professionals (e.g., physicians) will need more decision support tools to practice best medicine and stay in business.
A clinical outcome tracking and analysis (COTA) module is a tool to, for example, enable medical professionals and/or other users to practice better medicine, better manage and locate specific information associated with a disease and/or patient, and to facilitate improved control of cost.
The parameters of clinical outcome tracking and analysis include sorting, outcome tracking, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status; toxicity to therapy and cost of care. In one aspect, a method and system include the COTA module that receives, from a client device operated by a user, one or more parameters to sort a plurality of data records, and, in response to the receiving, sorts the data records based on the received parameters. A nodal address, indicating one or more variables, is applied to the sorted set of patient medical records to determine a clinically relevant set of patient medical records as the sorted set of patient medical records satisfying the one or more variables. The COTA module then analyzes the clinically relevant set of patient medical records and communicates at least a portion of the classified and sorted data records and the updated data records to a client device for display.
Each data record includes data associated with a disease and data associated with patients currently having the disease or patients who previously had the disease. The COTA module can receive the data from an electronic medical record (EMR), from a user, from a medical professional, from an expert, or from any other source.
The COTA module can enable the user to perform various analyses on one or more of the data records. For example, the COTA module can enable a comparison of data or of tracked outcomes between patients can identify a specific patient as a candidate for a specific treatment or drug, can communicate an analysis tool to the client device to facilitate analysis of, for instance, the classified and sorted data records or to enable comparison of Kaplan Meier curves, and can determine, based on the tracking, whether a specific doctor associated with a patient is treating the patient in accordance with treatment techniques of other doctors treating other (similar) patients.
The COTA module may also transmit an alert to the client device upon the occurrence of a trigger. A trigger may be, for example, at diagnosis, at progression, at dose change, at drug change, at toxicity, when trending towards variance from a desired outcome, and/or at a specific time.
The described invention provides a method, system and non-transitory computer readable medium storing computer program instructions for enabling a patient with a condition to optimize treatment options based on geography, clinical outcome, cost and other patient-set criteria. Computer program instructions when executed on a processor comprising a first clinical outcome tracking and analysis module causes the first clinical outcome and tracking module to account for biological variance up front by grouping patients in the patient population, thereby effectively removing biological variance as a factor in value of care, and leaving treatment variance as a predominant factor in treatment outcome by receiving, sorting, and classifying personal health information the latter by generating and assigning a plurality of nodal addresses, each nodal address representing a discrete punctuated string of digits comprising a prefix, a middle and a suffix that each represent a set of preselected variables that partition the sorted and classified information into a clinically relevant set of information. The described invention provides for communication between the processor comprising the first clinical outcome tracking and analysis module and a client device comprising a second clinical outcome tracking and analysis module that are communicatively linked so that a nodal address is assigned and communicated to the patient along with a geographically organized list of medical professionals treating patients within the assigned nodal address. Once the patient selects a medical professional that meets one or more of geographical, cost and clinical outcome needs of the patient, the first clinical outcome and tracking analysis module is communicatively linked to a computing device at the selected medical professional's office to facilitate scheduling of an appointment. The assigned nodal address can be associated with one or more bundles of predetermined patient care services for treatment of the condition, which can provide a predetermined course of treatment, cost certainty, or both.